The New Year drew Mrs. Drabdump a new lodger. He was an old gentleman
with a long grey beard. He rented the rooms of the late Mr. Constant, and
lived a very retired life. Haunted rooms--or rooms that ought to be
haunted if the ghosts of those murdered in them had any self-respect--are
supposed to fetch a lower rent in the market. The whole Irish problem
might be solved if the spirits of "Mr. Balfour's victims" would only
depreciate the value of property to a point consistent with the support
of an agricultural population. But Mrs. Drabdump's new lodger paid so
much for his rooms that he laid himself open to a suspicion of a special
interest in ghosts. Perhaps he was a member of the Psychical Society.
The neighbourhood imagined him another mad philanthropist, but as he did
not appear to be doing any good to anybody it relented and conceded his
sanity. Mortlake, who occasionally stumbled across him in the passage,
did not trouble himself to think about him at all. He was too full
of other troubles and cares. Though he worked harder than ever, the
spirit seemed to have gone out of him. Sometimes he forgot himself in
a fine rapture of eloquence--lashing himself up into a divine resentment
of injustice or a passion of sympathy with the sufferings of his
brethren--but mostly he plodded on in dull, mechanical fashion. He still
made brief provincial tours, starring a day here and a day there, and
everywhere his admirers remarked how jaded and overworked he looked.
There was talk of starting a subscription to give him a holiday on the
Continent--a luxury obviously unobtainable on the few pounds allowed
him per week. The new lodger would doubtless have been pleased to
subscribe, for he seemed quite to like occupying Mortlake's chamber the
nights he was absent, though he was thoughtful enough not to disturb the
hard-worked landlady in the adjoining room by unseemly noise. Wimp was
always a quiet man.
Meantime the twenty-first of the month approached, and the East-end was
in excitement. Mr. Gladstone had consented to be present at the ceremony
of unveiling the portrait of Arthur Constant, presented by an unknown
donor to the Bow Break o' Day Club, and it was to be a great function.
The whole affair was outside the lines of party politics, so that even
Conservatives and Socialists considered themselves justified in pestering
the committee for tickets. To say nothing of ladies! As the committee
desired to be present themselves, nine-tenths of the applications for
admission had to be refused, as is usual on these occasions. The
committee agreed among themselves to exclude the fair sex altogether as
the only way of disposing of their womankind, who were making speeches
as long as Mr. Gladstone's. Each committeeman told his sisters, female
cousins, and aunts, that the other committeemen had insisted on divesting
the function of all grace; and what could a man do when he was in a
minority of one?
Crowl, who was not a member of the Break o' Day Club, was particularly
anxious to hear the great orator whom he despised; fortunately Mortlake
remembered the cobbler's anxiety to hear himself, and on the eve of the
ceremony sent him a ticket. Crowl was in the first flush of possession
when Denzil Cantercot returned, after a sudden and unannounced absence
of three days. His clothes were muddy and tattered, his cocked hat was
deformed, his cavalier beard was matted, and his eyes were bloodshot.
The cobbler nearly dropped the ticket at the sight of him. "Hallo,
Cantercot!" he gasped. "Why, where have you been all these days?"
"Terribly busy!" said Denzil. "Here, give me a glass of water. I'm dry as
the Sahara."
Crowl ran inside and got the water, trying hard not to inform Mrs. Crowl
of their lodger's return. "Mother" had expressed herself freely on the
subject of the poet during his absence, and not in terms which would have
commended themselves to the poet's fastidious literary sense. Indeed, she
did not hesitate to call him a sponger and a low swindler, who had run
away to avoid paying the piper. Her fool of a husband might be quite sure
he would never set eyes on the scoundrel again. However, Mrs. Crowl was
wrong. Here was Denzil back again. And yet Mr. Crowl felt no sense of
victory. He had no desire to crow over his partner and to utter that
"See! didn't I tell you so?" which is a greater consolation than religion
in most of the misfortunes of life. Unfortunately, to get the water,
Crowl had to go to the kitchen; and as he was usually such a temperate
man, this desire for drink in the middle of the day attracted the
attention of the lady in possession. Crowl had to explain the situation.
Mrs. Crowl ran into the shop to improve it. Mr. Crowl followed in dismay,
leaving a trail of spilt water in his wake.
"You good-for-nothing, disreputable scare-crow, where have--"
"Hush, mother. Let him drink. Mr. Cantercot is thirsty."
"Does he care if my children are hungry?"
Denzil tossed the water greedily down his throat almost at a gulp, as if
it were brandy.
"Madam," he said, smacking his lips, "I do care. I care intensely. Few
things in life would grieve me more deeply than to hear that a child, a
dear little child--the Beautiful in a nutshell--had suffered hunger. You
wrong me." His voice was tremulous with the sense of injury. Tears stood
in his eyes.
"Wrong you? I've no wish to _wrong_ you," said Mrs. Crowl. "I should like
to _hang_ you."
"Don't talk of such ugly things," said Denzil, touching his throat
nervously.
"Well, what have you been doin' all this time?"
"Why, what should I be doing?"
"How should I know what became of you? I thought it was another murder."
"What!" Denzil's glass dashed to fragments on the floor. "What do you
mean?"
But Mrs. Crowl was glaring too viciously at Mr. Crowl to reply. He
understood the message as if it were printed. It ran: "You have broken
one of my best glasses. You have annihilated threepence, or a week's
school fees for half the family." Peter wished she would turn the
lightning upon Denzil, a conductor down whom it would run innocuously.
He stooped down and picked up the pieces as carefully as if they were
cuttings from the Koh-i-noor. Thus the lightning passed harmlessly over
his head and flew towards Cantercot.
"What do I mean?" Mrs. Crowl echoed, as if there had been no interval. "I
mean that it would be a good thing if you _had_ been murdered."
"What unbeautiful ideas you have to be sure!" murmured Denzil.
"Yes; but they'd be useful," said Mrs. Crowl, who had not lived with
Peter all these years for nothing. "And if you haven't been murdered,
what _have_ you been doing?"
"My dear, my dear," put in Crowl, deprecatingly, looking up from his
quadrupedal position like a sad dog, "you are not Cantercot's keeper."
"Oh, ain't I?" flashed his spouse. "Who else keeps him, I should like to
know?"
Peter went on picking up the pieces of the Koh-i-noor.
"I have no secrets from Mrs. Crowl," Denzil explained courteously. "I
have been working day and night bringing out a new paper. Haven't had a
wink of sleep for three nights."
Peter looked up at his bloodshot eyes with respectful interest.
"The capitalist met me in the street--an old friend of mine--I was
overjoyed at the _rencontre_ and told him the idea I'd been brooding over
for months, and he promised to stand all the racket."
"What sort of a paper?" said Peter.
"Can you ask? To what do you think I've been devoting my days and nights
but to the cultivation of the Beautiful?"
"Is that what the paper will be devoted to?"
"Yes. To the Beautiful."
"I know," snorted Mrs. Crowl, "with portraits of actresses."
"Portraits? Oh, no!" said Denzil. "That would be the True, not the
Beautiful."
"And what's the name of the paper?" asked Crowl.
"Ah, that's a secret, Peter. Like Scott, I prefer to remain anonymous."
"Just like your Fads. I'm only a plain man, and I want to know where the
fun of anonymity comes in. If I had any gifts, I should like to get the
credit. It's a right and natural feeling to my thinking."
"Unnatural, Peter; unnatural. We're all born anonymous, and I'm for
sticking close to Nature. Enough for me that I disseminate the Beautiful.
Any letters come during my absence, Mrs. Crowl?"
"No," she snapped. "But a gent named Grodman called. He said you hadn't
been to see him for some time, and looked annoyed to hear you'd
disappeared. How much have you let _him_ in for?"
"The man's in _my_ debt," said Denzil, annoyed. "I wrote a book for him
and he's taken all the credit for it, the rogue! My name doesn't appear
even in the Preface. What's that ticket you're looking so lovingly at,
Peter?"
"That's for to-night--the unveiling of Constant's portrait. Gladstone
speaks. Awful demand for places."
"Gladstone!" sneered Denzil. "Who wants to hear Gladstone? A man who's
devoted his life to pulling down the pillars of Church and State."
"A man who's devoted his whole life to propping up the crumbling Fads of
Religion and Monarchy. But, for all that, the man has his gifts, and I'm
burnin' to hear him."
"I wouldn't go out of my way an inch to hear him," said Denzil; and went
up to his room, and when Mrs. Crowl sent him up a cup of nice strong tea
at tea-time, the brat who bore it found him lying dressed on the bed,
snoring unbeautifully.
The evening wore on. It was fine frosty weather. The Whitechapel Road
swarmed with noisy life, as though it were a Saturday night. The stars
flared in the sky like the lights of celestial costermongers. Everybody
was on the alert for the advent of Mr. Gladstone. He must surely come
through the Road on his journey from the West Bow-wards. But nobody saw
him or his carriage, except those about the Hall. Probably he went by
tram most of the way. He would have caught cold in an open carriage, or
bobbing his head out of the window of a closed.
"If he had only been a German prince, or a cannibal king," said Crowl,
bitterly, as he plodded towards the Club, "we should have disguised Mile
End in bunting and blue fire. But perhaps it's a compliment. He knows his
London, and it's no use trying to hide the facts from him. They must have
queer notions of cities, those monarchs. They must fancy everybody lives
in a flutter of flags and walks about under triumphal arches, like as if
I were to stitch shoes in my Sunday clothes." By a defiance of chronology
Crowl had them on to-day, and they seemed to accentuate the simile.
"And why shouldn't life be fuller of the Beautiful?" said Denzil. The
poet had brushed the reluctant mud off his garments to the extent it was
willing to go, and had washed his face, but his eyes were still bloodshot
from the cultivation of the Beautiful. Denzil was accompanying Crowl to
the door of the Club out of good fellowship. Denzil was himself
accompanied by Grodman, though less obtrusively. Least obtrusively was he
accompanied by his usual Scotland Yard shadows, Wimp's agents. There was
a surging nondescript crowd about the Club, so that the police, and the
doorkeeper, and the stewards could with difficulty keep out the tide of
the ticketless, through which the current of the privileged had equal
difficulty in permeating. The streets all around were thronged with
people longing for a glimpse of Gladstone. Mortlake drove up in a hansom
(his head a self-conscious pendulum of popularity, swaying and bowing to
right and left) and received all the pent-up enthusiasm.
"Well, good-by, Cantercot," said Crowl.
"No, I'll see you to the door, Peter."
They fought their way shoulder to shoulder.
Now that Grodman had found Denzil he was not going to lose him again. He
had only found him by accident, for he was himself bound to the unveiling
ceremony, to which he had been invited in view of his known devotion to
the task of unveiling the Mystery. He spoke to one of the policemen
about, who said, "Ay, ay, sir," and he was prepared to follow Denzil, if
necessary, and to give up the pleasure of hearing Gladstone for an acuter
thrill. The arrest must be delayed no longer.
But Denzil seemed as if he were going in on the heels of Crowl. This
would suit Grodman better. He could then have the two pleasures. But
Denzil was stopped halfway through the door.
"Ticket, sir!"
Denzil drew himself up to his full height.
"Press," he said majestically. All the glories and grandeurs of the
Fourth Estate were concentrated in that haughty monosyllable. Heaven
itself is full of journalists who have overawed St. Peter. But the
doorkeeper was a veritable dragon.
"What paper, sir?"
"_New York Herald_" said Denzil, sharply. He did not relish his word
being distrusted.
"_New York Herald_" said one of the bystanding stewards, scarce catching
the sounds. "Pass him in."
And in the twinkling of an eye Denzil had eagerly slipped inside.
But during the brief altercation Wimp had come up. Even he could not make
his face quite impassive, and there was a suppressed intensity in the
eyes and a quiver about the mouth. He went in on Denzil's heels, blocking
up the doorway with Grodman. The two men were so full of their coming
_coups_ that they struggled for some seconds, side by side, before they
recognised each other. Then they shook hands heartily.
"That was Cantercot just went in, wasn't it, Grodman?" said Wimp.
"I didn't notice," said Grodman, in tones of utter indifference.
At bottom Wimp was terribly excited. He felt that his _coup_ was going
to be executed under very sensational circumstances. Everything would
combine to turn the eyes of the country upon him--nay, of the world, for
had not the Big Bow Mystery been discussed in every language under the
sun? In these electric times the criminal receives a cosmopolitan
reputation. It is a privilege he shares with few other artists. This time
Wimp would be one of them. And he felt deservedly so. If the criminal had
been cunning to the point of genius in planning the murder, he had been
acute to the point of divination in detecting it. Never before had he
pieced together so broken a chain. He could not resist the unique
opportunity of setting a sensational scheme in a sensational framework.
The dramatic instinct was strong in him; he felt like a playwright who
has constructed a strong melodramatic plot, and has the Drury Lane stage
suddenly offered him to present it on. It would be folly to deny himself
the luxury, though the presence of Mr. Gladstone and the nature of the
ceremony should perhaps have given him pause. Yet, on the other hand,
these were the very factors of the temptation. Wimp went in and took a
seat behind Denzil. All the seats were numbered, so that everybody might
have the satisfaction of occupying somebody else's. Denzil was in the
special reserved places in the front row just by the central gangway;
Crowl was squeezed into a corner behind a pillar near the back of the
hall. Grodman had been honoured with a seat on the platform, which was
accessible by steps on the right and left, but he kept his eye on Denzil.
The picture of the poor idealist hung on the wall behind Grodman's head,
covered by its curtain of brown holland. There was a subdued buzz of
excitement about the hall, which swelled into cheers every now and again
as some gentleman known to fame or Bow took his place upon the platform.
It was occupied by several local M.P.'s of varying politics, a number of
other Parliamentary satellites of the great man, three or four labour
leaders, a peer or two of philanthropic pretensions, a sprinkling of
Toynbee and Oxford Hall men, the president and other honorary officials,
some of the family and friends of the deceased, together with the
inevitable percentage of persons who had no claim to be there save cheek.
Gladstone was late--later than Mortlake, who was cheered to the echo when
he arrived, some one starting "For He's a Jolly Good Fellow," as if it
were a political meeting. Gladstone came in just in time to acknowledge
the compliment. The noise of the song, trolled out from iron lungs, had
drowned the huzzahs heralding the old man's advent. The convivial chorus
went to Mortlake's head, as if champagne had really preceded it. His eyes
grew moist and dim. He saw himself swimming to the Millennium on waves of
enthusiasm. Ah, how his brother toilers should be rewarded for their
trust in him!
With his usual courtesy and consideration, Mr. Gladstone had refused to
perform the actual unveiling of Arthur Constant's portrait. "That," he
said in his postcard, "will fall most appropriately to Mr. Mortlake, a
gentleman who has, I am given to understand, enjoyed the personal
friendship of the late Mr. Constant, and has cooperated with him in
various schemes for the organisation of skilled and unskilled classes
of labour, as well as for the diffusion of better ideals--ideals of
self-culture and self-restraint--among the working men of Bow, who have
been fortunate, so far as I can perceive, in the possession (if in one
case unhappily only temporary possession) of two such men of undoubted
ability and honesty to direct their divided counsels and to lead them
along a road, which, though I cannot pledge myself to approve of it in
all its turnings and windings, is yet not unfitted to bring them somewhat
nearer to goals to which there are few of us but would extend some
measure of hope that the working classes of this great Empire may in due
course, yet with no unnecessary delay, be enabled to arrive."
Mr. Gladstone's speech was an expansion of his postcard, punctuated by
cheers. The only new thing in it was the graceful and touching way in
which he revealed what had been a secret up till then--that the portrait
had been painted and presented to the Bow Break o' Day Club, by Lucy
Brent, who in the fulness of time would have been Arthur Constant's wife.
It was a painting for which he had sat to her while alive, and she had
stifled yet pampered her grief by working hard at it since his death. The
fact added the last touch of pathos to the occasion. Crowl's face was
hidden behind his red handkerchief; even the fire of excitement in Wimp's
eye was quenched for a moment by a teardrop, as he thought of Mrs. Wimp
and Wilfred. As for Grodman, there was almost a lump in his throat.
Denzil Cantercot was the only unmoved man in the room. He thought the
episode quite too Beautiful, and was already weaving it into rhyme.
At the conclusion of his speech Mr. Gladstone called upon Tom Mortlake
to unveil the portrait. Tom rose, pale and excited. He faltered as he
touched the cord. He seemed overcome with emotion. Was it the mention of
Lucy Brent that had moved him to his depths?
The brown holland fell away--the dead stood revealed as he had been in
life. Every feature, painted by the hand of Love, was instinct with
vitality: the fine, earnest face, the sad kindly eyes, the noble brow,
seeming still a-throb with the thought of Humanity. A thrill ran through
the room--there was a low, undefinable murmur. Oh, the pathos and the
tragedy of it! Every eye was fixed, misty with emotion, upon the dead man
in the picture, and the living man who stood, pale and agitated, and
visibly unable to commence his speech, at the side of the canvas.
Suddenly a hand was laid upon the labour leader's shoulder, and there
rang through the hall in Wimp's clear, decisive tones the words--"Tom
Mortlake, I arrest you for the murder of Arthur Constant!"